I’ll admit I’m torn about our Supreme Court’s decision to shield Twitter from being sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act. I mean, we do brandish the word “terrorist” too easily, I always fear good Americans getting ruined over trumped-up “terrorism” charges, Section 230 remains a major impediment to suing social media corporations, and I prefer to blame actual terrorists for actual terrorism rather than the social media platforms that (at best) enable them. On the other hand, Twitter didn’t merely host terrorists’ content, but actually went out of its way to ensure its users saw it; no law (or “commitment to free speech”) compels them to do that, and we ought to do something about that. (I would hope anyone would recognize “the algorithms did it, so no one’s responsible” as horsedoodle.)
When I hear that “The Newest College Admissions Ploy,” according to ProPublica, is “Paying to Make Your Teen a ‘Peer-Reviewed’ Author.” I have to say it sure does seem like another way to keep poor/Black/Brown kids out of colleges, as most of them can’t afford $2,500 (or $10,000!) for pretend-publication of “academic research.” It’s also a way of filling teenagers with even more angst about that college education they’re going to spend the rest of their lives paying off. But wait, there’s more! Some journals seem to publish just any old thing, and some of the students’ mentors lie not just about how much of the kids’ work they did but about their credentials. “Ph.D.” or “Ph.D. student,” who can tell the difference?
I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you! that our IRS has admitted that it audits Black folks up to five times more often than taxpayers of other races. Why, it’s as shocking as hearing that they go after mostly poor people because they can’t afford the lawyers! Full disclosure: it actually is a little shocking to hear them actually admit it, rather than just do it and not admit it. And stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but our IRS blames a flawed algorithm for all the audits of Black folks, which lends credence to the notion that when the programmer’s biased, the software’s biased. More money for our IRS should help this problem, too, since now our IRS can go after some rich tax cheats, instead of just picking low-hanging fruit among folks who might have wrongly declared eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit.
I hope our Food and Drug Administration does approve over-the-counter birth control pills, and I know it’ll help women who don’t have enough health insurance or who live in areas that don’t have family planning clinics, but I still worry about the cost. The pills I take are much, much cheaper in large part because I get them via prescription even though they’re available over-the-counter. I would hate for price to be another obstacle for poor women, nearly as much as I hate it when Republican ball-swingers pass comprehensive abortion bans and then can’t understand why a constituent dies from an ectopic pregnancy or a doctor is afraid to give chemotherapy to a pregnant woman.
Finally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (E-AL), who thinks there’s a lot more in the Durham report than there actually is, says on Newsmax that “(i)f people don’t go to jail for this, the American people should just stand up and say, ‘Listen, enough’s enough, let’s don’t have elections anymore.’” Always right-wingers love democracy until it tells them what they don’t want to hear! Alabama had the dumb luck of having Doug Jones, who put two of the Birmingham bombers in jail, as their Senator, but apparently they preferred a guy who thinks democracy is all about him stamping his feet and getting his way.
Comments